Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
should try to get as much information on these topics as possible by going through
product documentation, attending knowledge transfer sessions, going through the
application by login with different roles in the application, and finding out about
process flow, workflow, business logic, and so on. Once you are comfortable with the
application, it will become easier for you to test it and make plans to test it.
For outsourced projects, it is very important that along the execution cycle you
provide status reports from time to time. For this reason it is extremely useful to
track your project using earned value management (EVM).
..1
Earned Value Management
Whenever a project is initiated, there is a value associated with it against the costs
that will be incurred in executing that project.
There is a big difficulty in implementing EVM in software projects. The reason
is that in software projects, it is very difficult to make good estimates for efforts.
That is why most software projects are executed on a time-and-material basis instead
of on a fixed cost-fixed schedule basis. In such a scenario, using complex metrics
like EVM is even more difficult (see
Figure 7.1)
.
However, in software test projects, it is still possible. Software projects that are
offshored and where the service provider has many projects going on at any time
are especially amenable to EVM implementation. This is because, due to extensive
project execution knowledge, the service providers have a good repository of knowl-
edge on which they can depend for new projects. The repository can provide critical
information on which new projects can be estimated to a great accuracy. So EVM can
definitely be applied for offshored software test projects (see
Figures 7.2
to
7.4)
.
Now let us consider how we can implement EVM in software test projects.
$60,000
$50,000
$40,000
Planned value
Actual cost
$30,000
$20,000
$10,000
$0
Time (in months)
Figure ..1
Project tracking without earned value.
